Notes on Yosemite/Dropbox Compatibility

[Steve]

Hi Folks,

 

If you're using Dropbox on Yosemite, there are a couple of things to be aware of.

 

1) Applications running on OS X Yosemite 10.10.0 can crash when opening from or saving to a file inside the Dropbox folder.

Dropbox says 10.10.1 fixes this crash, so if you’re running 10.10.0, you’ll want to update to Yosemite 10.10.1 or later.

2) If you edit your files directly from your Dropbox folder on Yosemite, previous local Versions are only available until the next time Dropbox updates the file.

For example, if you open a file in your Dropbox folder on your Mac and work on it for a while, switch to your iPad, and continue working on the file, and then sync the changes to Dropbox, any previous local versions stored in Versions on your Mac are no longer available in the versions browser.

It’s not clear if this is an Apple issue or a Dropbox issue, but it seems to affect all apps that use Versions on Yosemite, including Pages, Keynote, Numbers, TextEdit, Preview, and Storyist.

It does not appear to affect apps running on Mavericks.

To see this issue for yourself, try the following on a machine running Yosemite:

1. Open TextEdit and create a new file. (File > New)
2. Type some text (e.g. “One”) into the new file and save the file to your Dropbox folder. Manually saving a file creates a new version.
3. Type something else (e.g. “Two”) and save the file.
4. Type something else again (e.g. “Three”) and save the file.
5. Choose File > Revert To > Browse All Versions. In the versions browser, you should see three versions that correspond to the files saved in steps 2-4 above.
6. Switch to another device (Mac or iOS) and wait for the file to sync.
7. Open the file on the second device, edit it, and save it.
8. Switch back to the first device, wait for the file to sync, and open it.
9. Choose File > Revert To > Browse All Versions. The version browser now reports that there are no previous versions available.

(If you repeat the above steps on a Mac running Mavericks, previous versions are still available in step 9.)

The important thing to note is that while Dropbox does keep previous versions of your work, unless you subscribe to the Extended Version History service, Dropbox only keeps the old versions for 30 days, so you don't want to count on it to keep your entire project history.

There are several ways to work around this issue:

1. Enable Time Machine backups. If you allow Time Machine to create regular backups, you’ll be able to browse the backups of your Dropbox folder using the Time Machine app. The Versions Browser won’t show these versions, however.
2. Edit your project outside of your Dropbox folder. You’ll need to copy the file to your Dropbox folder when you want to sync it, but the versions browser will be able to keep a local version history.
3. Leave the project in your Dropbox folder, but make manual copies to another folder every so often.

According to the Dropbox Release Notes, Dropbox is actively working with Apple to resolve interoperability issues. I’ll update this thread as updates become available.

This announcement thread is locked for comments, so if you have questions or comments, please add them to this thread.

Update 1: Reported to Apple as rdar://19841498 and to Dropbox (see this post).

Update 2 (3/2/15): Dropbox support opened a bug report with their client engineering team (#T31887).

-Steve